Oriel College

Alexander Robertus Todd, Baron Todd, OM, PRS FRSE was a Scottish biochemist whose research on the structure and synthesis of nucleotides,... nucleosides, and nucleotide coenzymes gained him the 1957 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. Todd was born near Glasgow, attended Allan Glen's School and graduated from the University of Glasgow with a B.Sc. in 1928. He received a Ph.D from Johann Wolfgang Goethe University of Frankfurt am Main in 1931 for his thesis on the chemistry of the bile acids. After studying at Oriel College, Oxford he gained another doctorate in and held posts with the Lister Institute, the University of Edinburgh and the University of London, where he was appointed Reader in Biochemistry. Todd became the Sir Samuel Hall Professor of Chemistry and Director of the Chemical Laboratories of the University of Manchester in 1938, where he began working on nucleosides, compounds that form the structural units of nucleic acids . In 1944 he was appointed to the 1702 Chair of Chemistry in the University of Cambridge, which he held until his retirement in 1971, after a heart attack.
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